Strictly speaking, this is good advice. However, when I took up aid climbing, it changed my free climbing perspective significantly. Seeing how my placements worked under load exposed much of my unfounded fear during free climbing. Placements that I previously believed were "dicey" were shown to be bomber. My appreciation and trust of a good nut placement, for example, which I really learned during aid climbing, has enabled me to truly *free* climb through situations where I was previously bound by fear. It is no longer a question of whether the placement will hold. It is all about whether I can hold on. In other words, aid climbing has educated me on what the actual boundaries of safety are, reducing the grey zone and expanding my view of what I am capable of.

For me at least, aid climbing upped my free climbing abilities by at least one full grade. For this reason, I believe that aid is a fast track for improving one's trad free climbing ability, and so I recommend it to everyone.

I don't agree with anybody who says fear is inherently good. It's an instinctual reaction that impairs logical thought, and hence—my opinion here—it is antithetical to safe climbing. Respect for your situation... thoughtfulness... experience... these are the things it's good to have, not fear. When I'm afraid, sure, I might back down and "live to climb another day." But just as likely, I'll attempt to "manage the fear," fail at it and make gear and movement mistakes. I'll overgrip and waste energy. I'll keep my slings short when I should extend them. I'll... well, you get the point.

Of course, I'm almost certainly arguing semantics here and not actually disagreeing at all.

[..]when I took up aid climbing, it changed my free climbing perspective significantly. Seeing how my placements worked under load exposed much of my unfounded fear during free climbing. Placements that I previously believed were "dicey" were shown to be bomber[..]

The new trad leader also has to learn to constantly think about his protection as a whole system. Placements that are bomber for a downward pull can get whipped right out by an outward or sideways pull of the rope when the system goes under tension.

I don't agree with anybody who says fear is inherently good. It's an instinctual reaction that impairs logical thought, and hence—my opinion here—it is antithetical to safe climbing.

Fear itself does not impair logical thought. Panic impairs logical thought. Fear places emphasis on survival rather than other goals without it focus on other goals may distract somebody from what matters.

Strictly speaking, this is good advice. However, when I took up aid climbing, it changed my free climbing perspective significantly. Seeing how my placements worked under load exposed much of my unfounded fear during free climbing. Placements that I previously believed were "dicey" were shown to be bomber. My appreciation and trust of a good nut placement, for example, which I really learned during aid climbing, has enabled me to truly *free* climb through situations where I was previously bound by fear. It is no longer a question of whether the placement will hold. It is all about whether I can hold on. In other words, aid climbing has educated me on what the actual boundaries of safety are, reducing the grey zone and expanding my view of what I am capable of.

this ^^

In reply to:

For me at least, aid climbing upped my free climbing abilities by at least one full grade. For this reason, I believe that aid is a fast track for improving one's trad free climbing ability, and so I recommend it to everyone.

haha! I wish

but yeah, I learned that aid climbing increased my ability to climb confidently by a substantial margin. I totally agree with your post.

I don't agree with anybody who says fear is inherently good. It's an instinctual reaction that impairs logical thought, and hence—my opinion here—it is antithetical to safe climbing.

Fear itself does not impair logical thought. Panic impairs logical thought. Fear places emphasis on survival rather than other goals without it focus on other goals may distract somebody from what matters.

Fear keeps us alive out there.

But there is a couple different kinds of fear. An irrational fear can cause panic and has no place in climbing and I believe is more akin to what jay was speaking of. A healthy fear (rational) is indeed needed and should be acknowledged frequently to help keep us alive.

Not much to add, except for this. I don't have trust in any SINGLE piece, no matter how bomber. But, I do have trust in the system, which includes the entire protection system as well as my judgement of it.

Great advice Cracklover. I've only seen one guy die due to gear failure. The young Canadian man had a piece pull on a 5.10 route which he had earlier followed. First the top piece which he had already dogged on yoinked out, then 3 more ripped (some of which he had also dogged on earlier) and the resulting 70 foot auger into the dirt was too much. 20 min of futile CPR followed until a Dr showed up and pronounced him dead. Autopsy later said that the aorta had ripped out of the heart at impact, thus, our efforts were futile.

jt512 wrote:

Does anybody here have a copy of this study or know where one can be obtained? These statistics are useless if we can't evaluate how they were produced. Jay

Jay, I read that 1 in 20 stat Rgold references in a climbing magazine article which interviewed Doug Phillips, founder and President of Metolius.

Searched and got this off RC.com. (appears to have been copied off of a gripped mag article which isn't online anymore. Doug Phillips speaking)

In reply to:

1. No matter how good a placement looks, you can never be sure it will hold. During my tests, about one in twenty good-looking placements pulled out when loaded. The challenge is to figure out why the cam pulled, and what could have been done to prevent this from happening.

To understand why cams fail, we classify pullouts into six basic categories:

Lubricants (water, dirt, dust, moss, ice) Poor rock quality Cam movement (walking, misaligned) Poor placement Cam design Poor maintenance Lubricants Anything that gets between the aluminum cam lobe and the solid rock wall can act as a lubricant reducing the friction. Water is an obvious lubricant as is dirt or fine dust. A dirty seeping crack with a thin layer of moss can cause an otherwise good placement to consistently pull out.

Poor rock quality There are three categories of rock to avoid: soft, smooth, and weak:

Soft rock tends to crush under the load of a fall. The crushed particles act as a lubricant causing the cam to slip. After this type of failure, the cam lobes will often be coated with a thin film of pulverized rock. Smooth or polished rock will not allow the cams to grip. Smooth stone can be found in water polished cracks as well as glacier polished stone. It is very unnerving to watch a cam consistently pull out of a super smooth crack that would otherwise be a perfect placement. Weak or fractured rock will break, causing the cam to loose traction. When a cam pulls out of seemingly solid stone, I often find a small piece of fractured rock near one of the cam lobes. Occasionally a larger chunk of stone gets blown out of the crack due to an existing fracture or weakness in the rock.

Cam movement Cams will move from the motion of a passing climber, rope action and impact from a fall. This movement can lead to pullout failures, as the cam is no longer positioned to hold a fall. To prevent this, place the cam so it has room to move and still remain in a good camming position. A long sling will reduce unwanted movement and allow you to fall on the next piece without putting any outward tension on the lower cam. Cam pullout failures commonly occur with a sharp outward or sideways pull rather than the downward pull you had intended.

Poor placement Wide flares, bottoming cracks and irregular rock features make it difficult to get solid cam placements. Help optimize the security of a placement by maximizing cam-to-rock contact. Place good gear before and after difficult-to-protect sections. In my tests, I have occasionally been surprised by a bad looking placements that hold when drop tested. Most of the time however, if a cam looks bad, it will pull out.

Cam Design The brand of cam makes a difference. Metolius cams are made with holding power as the primary design criteria. The main variables are cam angle, aluminum alloy, surface contact area, and cam alignment.

Cam angle The cam angle we use is 13.25 degrees. This sacrifices range, but increases outward force, making the cams harder to pull out.

Aluminum alloy Our aluminum alloy is 7075 for small and midrange cams and 6061 for larger sizes. The 7075 is stronger, maintaining cam shape under load in the small sizes. This is less of an issue in the large cams, so we switch to the lighter weight, less expensive, 6061.

Surface contact area Surface contact area is important. More surface area will create more friction increasing the cam’s security. Also, more surface area spreads the load more, improving holding power in soft or weak stone. Our Fat Cams were designed with this in mind.

Cam alignment Maximize holding power by lining up the cam lobes with the direction of pull. The original Friends did this by using a rigid stem. The Metolius cam’s relatively stiff “U” shaped body aligns the cam lobes with the direction of pull.

Poor maintenance Like all technical equipment, cams require maintenance. This includes cleaning, lubrication, replacing old or worn slings and repairing frayed trigger wires. Be sure to retire worn out cams.

2. Place two good cams at critical spots Because one in 20 cams pull, reduce cam pullout by putting in a second good piece. This gives you a 99.75% chance that one placements will hold. Equalize them if possible.

3. Place the cam in as fully retracted a position as possible without getting it stuck. This is the green zone on our Range Finder system. Tight placements help to guard against the following types of pullout:

Pullout due to cam movement Rope movement shifts cams. Long slings help, but you can increase security by placing the largest cam possible. If the cam moves to a wider crack section it will still have good contact with all four cams.

Pullout due to poor rock quality If the rock on one side of the crack fails the cam lobes on that side will begin to slip. A cam with a tight placement (green zone) has a better chance of holding. If the rock on both sides of the crack fails, the lobes dig into the rock. The tighter the placement, the more the cam can expand before failure.

Pullout due to lubrication When the cam pulls because of wet or dirty conditions it will move through several inches of crack before failure. If only one side of the crack is wet or dirty, the cam lobes on the wet side will tend to slip first. If the cam is in an open position the cams on the dry side will tip out and the placement will fail. In a tight placement the cams on the dry side will not tip out, greatly increasing the chance the placement will hold. I’ve observed a tight cam placement jamming just below the original placement.

Good advice for cams. Nut placements have their own little set of intricacies...."rules" you could say, and guidance for good placements that is often not so obvious. Note that the 4 pieces I saw pulled out were all med-large wired nut placements. I suspect Rgold could nail that down.

Why test it? We know that if you've done everything perfect or close to it all works- we pay them to test it so that we don't have to risk, you know, dying. Just make it your priority to practice holding on rather than falling. You'll appreciate effort spent practicing down climbing when you are run out above ledges and for one reason or another the little gear you did have falls out- practicing falling will really seem like a waste then. Not to mention you can get way more climbing in if you don't waste your time sitting on your ass in the air...that's how you actually get better at rock climbing, by rock climbing.

I'm very new to trad, i've done 15 leads, I've finally started testing my pieces while on lead with takes and bounce tests and so far its all holding. Was planning on taking a lead fall on a piece (found a route that has bolts and a good crack thought that would be a good testing place, back up placement with bolt... thoughts welcome to this approach)

It's an important topic worth discussing, so rather than burying it on page 4 of a thread about something else, I'm responding here.

Ecade - I know you're working on aid climbing too. My advice is to keep your aid climbing and your free climbing separate. There are a number of reasons I hope you'll consider this.

1 - When trad climbing, the objective is to climb cleanly from bottom to top, placing gear as you go. This is a mindset that requires a great deal of focus, and a number of techniques that are specific to the discipline, as opposed to what you might do when sport climbing. These are habits of mind that need to be trained, just like physical techniques. Get in the habit of falling and weighting pieces, and you're creating the wrong mindset.

2 - As a new leader, some of the gear you think is bomber probably isn't. This is true for *all* trad leaders, but more so for the n00b.

3 - The place to practice bouncing on gear is 1 - On the ground, where you'll fall six inches if the piece blows, or 2 - On an aid climb, where you'll fall six feet in overhanging terrain. On a free climb, where the gear is placed much less frequently than an aid climb, and there is usually much more to hit (all those lovely free-climbing holds and ledges) a fall can be much more dangerous.

4 - There is a trend these days born of the fear than is inherent in trad climbing. I'll see if I can explain it. It goes something like this: - Leading trad is scary. - Fear is uncomfortable. - People don't like being uncomfortable. - Therefore, people look for techniques to minimize or eliminate the fear. - New leaders are told to practice falling to gain trust in their gear. - This does a nice job in minimizing or eliminating the fear of falling on gear.

This is the wrong approach. The whole point of it is wrong. The fear one feels trad climbing is entirely appropriate. Gear fails, and falls have consequences. Not every time, or even most times, but eventually. And some people get unlucky, and that first real fall is the last one they take. Don't test your luck, and don't train yourself to feel that testing your luck is a good thing. An old saying in trad climbing is that you've got to fill up your bag of tricks before your bag of luck runs out.

Instead of training yourself to minimize your fear, you should be training yourself to live with it and manage it. This is a much longer process, and more uncomfortable, so it's kind of out of fashion these days. But it's really not complex, and people have been doing it a long time. The technique is as follows: Work your way up through the grades, placing lots of good gear. And when the opportunity arises, follow more experienced trad leaders. Eventually, you will gain an appropriate level of confidence, know what you can do, and how to do it, and will start pushing your limits. Then falls will start happening, and if you're doing things right, they'll be happening in appropriate circumstances (right gear, right terrain, etc).

Of course you will do what seems best to you, but I hope you'll consider the above.

Cheers!

GO

Dido…

I am 45 y/o. Climbing Trad since I was 12 y/o. I used to use 1 inch webbing for a swami belt , crappy shoes, EBs then Fire, and hip belays—I took a number of 40 foot falls as a kid on that setup—it hurt. It hurt to arrest a fall almost as much….. I always climb not to fall while leading trad. I have taken a number of falls over the years and got hurt. Climbing to fall on trad can get yourself killed. Fear is good. Fear has gotten me out of many bad places. I took a few years off from climbing and now I’m getting my 5 year old into the sport. Great sport, but be respectful and safe.

Took my first lead fall on gear this past labour day! Fell on a cam, it held, so I pushed the move again, fell again, so I pushed again, fell, finally made the move. moved past the piece placed another, this time a nut, moved past, fell, she held, tried again, suffice to say my second hated me because my nuts were hard to remove.

Proud to say I that I didn't take purposeful falls rather I pushed myself. I wrote a much longer post below, its my style to talk too much, but figured i'd give the meat then the fat.

Thanks again for the advice, not planning on making falling on gear a habit but was proud to have given all i had and as you'd surely imagine very happy that everything held!

The long story:

Its been months since this post, Rumney came and went and with her many great memories and great routes, NH has something special if you climb sport and can get there I think she is a great place and worthy of the trip.

But I digress.

This season for me was about learning and practicing trad. I took self rescue classes, climbed a plethora of local gear lines with much more experienced partners, made it to seneca rocks led a multi pitch route there (5.4:) . Headed out west to Canmore and climbed Ha Ling Peak (5.6) and a several other multi pitches in the area. pushed myself, found my limitations pushed past some and worked on others.

This labour day I went to Montagne D'Argent with some friends, they have strong granite like rock with nice sexy cracks :)

I climbed a 5.8 hand-finger crack, I climb harder sport lines but have limited, especially by comparison, crack climbing experience. This crack just seemed to be a crack in the earth, some what of a rarity in Ontario. I studied the line from every angle. I climbed the crappy sport line next to it just so I could see the upper section of the route more closely. I noted protection options and sizes, I said there is only 1 place where a fall (provided everything holds) would be bad but that I could hand jam (something I feel comfortable with) or grip the crimp on the face if I wasn't feeling it and had a placement to protect the ledge i'd potentially hit (not to brag, hell it ain't even much of a brag but to explain, I have climbed 5.12 crimpy sport so crimps and me, well we're on good terms)

Anyways, 6' up, there was a small bulge, and the crack was slightly overhung, so I placed below it, pulling the bulge, I fell. my #2 cam held, i tried again, I fell. I treid again, I fell, I tried again, I pulled! I found a stance, I placed a #4 master cam and moved up the line. came to a good stance and solid #5 walnut, I placed. I moved a foot past, I fell. Tried again, fell, rest a minute, tried again, made it.

well that was kind of it, the rest is just climbing a hand-finger crack with a a few face climbs. and wow this post feels like nonsense but eh slow day at the office now that the business of the day is come and gone

If you are uncomfortable falling, go sport climbing. If you are uncomfortable with your placements, go aid climbing. If you are uncomfortable getting above your pieces, climb something easier. But don't think that intentionally whipping on pieces (when you can just as easily keep climbing) will really help your mind, if you're struggling to get on lines that are "safe" to fall on. The principal skill of the trad leader is not gear placement, its learning how to recognize where you absolutely cannot afford to fall. You won't learn that by simply taking lots of falls, you'll only learn that by taking the right falls.

This labour day I went to Montagne D'Argent with some friends, they have strong granite like rock with nice sexy cracks :)

I climbed a 5.8 hand-finger crack, I climb harder sport lines but have limited, especially by comparison, crack climbing experience. This crack just seemed to be a crack in the earth, some what of a rarity in Ontario.

Anyways, 6' up, there was a small bulge, and the crack was slightly overhung, so I placed below it, pulling the bulge, I fell. my #2 cam held, i tried again, I fell. I treid again, I fell, I tried again, I pulled! I found a stance, I placed a #4 master cam and moved up the line. came to a good stance and solid #5 walnut, I placed. I moved a foot past, I fell. Tried again, fell, rest a minute, tried again, made it.

I'm sure you thoroughly inspected and /or replaced the piece of gear again after each time you fell on it. It would be unsettling to me to climb above the piece without doing that.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/...les/page.php?id=4655Firstly, a situation that commonly occurs is that the leader doesn't actually need to place the gear that he or she is so furiously trying to find or get in. If this is true, it's probably because they are scared with the idea of falling a certain distance. Fear of falling is very common. In fact, so many climbers are scared of falling, it's any wonder half of them go climbing at all.

Firstly, you need to gain enough experience to decide when it is safe to fall, and when it is not. Here I am talking about being scared to fall when really a fall would be safe.

The best thing for fear of falling is fall practice. If you are really scared, don't feel embarrassed to start with top rope falls, or even just swinging around on a rope. Climbing in general and hanging in space with air beneath you, is a very unnatural thing for a human to do, therefore you have to force your body and mind to be accustomed to it. Don't feel embarrassed about being scared of falling, because I swear that more than half of the climbing population is. What you should be embarrassed about is a reluctance to do anything about it... That's if, you care enough. Some climbers will accept a fear of falling as part of climbing, do everything to avoid falling and simply get on with it. This is OK if you don't want to push your grade, but progress will be impossible or considerably stagnated if you don't climb at your limit, and climbing at your limit requires a certain comfort with the idea of falling.

The other reason for furiously trying to get gear in that you don't actually need, is having a false belief that the gear you have already placed you will rip out. If it is bad, then you should obviously get more gear in, but if it's good, sometimes you should push on until you find a more restful position from which to place more. The clinch here, is obviously how to know when gear is good or not. This largely comes from experience. However ways to speed up the learning curve are to really look at your leader's gear placements when seconding or to test your gear, safely.

Was a 3 star at Paroi Du lac, couldn't find it on this site, have to review in my guidebook, at office now.

(star ratings denote protection options, upper portion, was thinner protection but there is a big tree that overhangs at the top by the top out. And I believe you are allowed to or well otherwise I at least sling cedar, in ontario they burn you at the stake for that :)

Was a 3 star at Paroi Du lac, couldn't find it on this site, have to review in my guidebook, at office now.

(star ratings denote protection options, upper portion, was thinner protection but there is a big tree that overhangs at the top by the top out. And I believe you are allowed to or well otherwise I at least sling cedar, in ontario they burn you at the stake for that :)

It has a 5.9 bolted line next to it.

You'll find a more complete list of climbs for MdA at www.thecrag.com.

Hm... It might have been Jos-Bras-de-Fer (listed as 5.7 in the guide, but a VERY VERY hard 5.7), with Dick Tracy (listed as 5.9 sport, but once again, a far harder 5.9 than most others at MdA) to its left.

Otherwise, there's no 5.8 trad line at Paroi du Lac.

Vertigineux, where the sign for "Paroi du Lac" is (incorrectly) has a 5.9 sport route (Conjonction de cellulaire) with Boris (5.7 trad) just to its left and a couple of 5.8 trad lines farther left of this.

In reply to:

did you make it out to MD?

If, by MD, you mean Mount Doom (in Sudbury), then yes I did make it out to it.

It would be Jo de Bras, a couch urfer who came along for the trip took a pic of my belayer and the you can see the two cams noted, having reviewed and reviewed on thecrag.com (awesome sight!) she's the one.

I top roped both, and later led Krakabra, nice lead, much easier, great gear, and unlike my experience in the rockies, no worries regarding route finding :) Never led M&M thoughtthat to place would be difficult and streneous, and that made me nervous, but ya, she is a crack and half, gear every cm if you are so inclined to place it and have no hand or foot holds. I had planned on leading it, but after taking those falls I decided that it wasn't worth pushing my luck and that i'd progressed well this season, best to hold off, read and learn, they'll always be another season, well provided... :)

I top roped both, and later led Krakabra, nice lead, much easier, great gear, and unlike my experience in the rockies, no worries regarding route finding :) Never led M&M thoughtthat to place would be difficult and streneous, and that made me nervous, but ya, she is a crack and half, gear every cm if you are so inclined to place it and have no hand or foot holds. I had planned on leading it, but after taking those falls I decided that it wasn't worth pushing my luck and that i'd progressed well this season, best to hold off, read and learn, they'll always be another season, well provided... :)

you going back for thanksgiving?

Given the really small difference in grades (5.7+ vs 5.8), M&M is a noticeably harder climb. Krakabra has rests, giving convenient places to place gear -- M&M really doesn't. It is just sustained at the grade. My first attempt to lead it, I place a nut from the base (where it turns steep), climbed above it, and it popped from rope angle... place two more pieces, climbed above them, and fell -- my first fall on gear. (I have, since, red-pointed it. Crack gloves make it much better!)

I'm actually headed to Rumney (with, maybe, a day on Chapel Pond Slab in the 'Dacks) for Thanksgiving weekend.